1. Field Of Invention
This invention relates to vending machines which dispense a product after giving a customer the opportunity to use a remotely controlled device to attempt to select a particular product from a product storage container.
2. Description Of The Art
Crane vending machines are well known. In them, the deposit of one or more coins or tokens enables a customer to operate a joy stick or other control mechanism to position a crane-type jaw or claw over a particular product in the storage container and to initiate a sequence in which the jaw or claw drops, grasps a product item, moves to a chute and drops the product item into the chute. Some machines of this type have been produced by Smart Industries Corp., Mfg. (e.g., their Candy crane machine Model 5802).
In such machines, the jaw or claw sometimes has difficulty grasping products of different sizes and configurations (or is at least perceived as having this difficulty). Further, for certain types of products consistency in picking up only one item per time may be a problem. In addition, a crane may seem low-tech and uninteresting to customers reared in the space age and accustomed to more space oriented video games.
Therefore, there is a need for a vending machine which will rarely retrieve more than one product, can retrieve products of different sizes and configurations, and is more attractive to the modern customer.